I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The stranger's viewpoint

I'm going to go a bit sideways on you in this post. Let's start with this:

Matthew: In order to prepare this speech, I rang a few people, to get a general picture of how Gareth was regarded by those who met him. "Fat" seems to have been a word people most connected with him. "Terribly rude" also rang a lot of bells. "So very fat and very rude" seems to have been the stranger's viewpoint.

No, EVE isn't dying, even though this quote is from one of my favorite speeches from Four Weddings and a Funeral. But I do want to delve again into the topic of how EVE Online is regarded outside of the game and in this way continue my thought from this morning.

I'm a big fan of Jim Sterling's work... notably his video series Jimquisition at The Escapist. Here's another example of how my brain works. Not too long ago, he did a piece about a very poor game on Steam that earned a lot of poor reviews. Amused and curious, I looked that game up on Steam. That set me remembering that EVE is also on Steam. That reminded me of the Steam tags and that EVE had probably been reviewed. And that sent me over to read the Steam reviews themselves.

Now I've read customer reviews of EVE here and there and they tend to be pretty bad, usually a mix of 1-star and 5-star reviews with the latter usually being long treatises that despite their enthusiasm make the game sound dull and the former usually being stuff like this. And sure enough, most of the negative reviews of EVE on Steam were in the same mold. But two things struck me:

Most of the reviews labeled as "helpful" of EVE on Steam are negative ones (seven of the ten most helpful, in fact!); and,

Reading it, it's clear that the writer (a) understands EVE Online, and (b) is exactly the kind of thoughtful gamer we want to attract to EVE Online. And it's equally clear that he wants nothing whatsoever to do with us:

People love to troll. "Collecting tears" is one of the main driving forces that keeps many people playing the game. Once you have a decent ship and skillbase, it's very, very easy to troll less experienced players. And, sadly, that seems to be enough for a lot of veterans to hang around. Eve is one of the few games that rewards you for being an asshole at every possible opportunity. If you're a sociopath and that's your idea of entertainment, then you'll have a blast.

...and...

At the end of the day, I simply could not justify spending any more time playing Eve Online. The more time I spent playing it, the more I realized how much I hated it. And that's the insidious part: it's hard to understand the negative aspects of the game until you've already sunk a lot of time into it.

Ouch! The interesting thing is that the review is so thoughtful, well-defended, and becoming so widely read (and widely tagged as helpful) that the author is having to re-edit the review every couple of weeks to add more explanations for his viewpoint:

Yes, Eve is mostly controlled by players, but they're no different from
players that you could find in any other popular online game. The only
difference is that Eve rewards them for their megalomania.

...and...

In almost every other way, the human interaction is the same as in any
other MMO. ... In Eve, there is just more opportunity and incentive to
be a dick.

Double ouch! Guys... again: this is the stranger's viewpoint.

Then you read the comments. And while about two out of ten blast the author for what he wrote, six out of ten grudgingly admit the guy makes good points. The final two out of ten?

Thank you for taking the time to post an honest review of this game. I was really on the fence about weather or not I should purchase this game, especially since it's been out for so long and I would be a brand new player. The information you provided was more than enough to help me make the decision to stay out of this game.

I keep coming back to this point because I find it so depressing. Nobody wants to join our little sandbox and we're steadily driving off anyone who does. And as the old shampoo commercial put it, they tell five friends, and they tell five friends.

I realize that a lot of you out there really want to keep New Eden as your own private little club, no noobs allowed, go back to WoW, et cetera ad nauseam. But some of you must feel differently. If you want the game to succeed, how do you not worry about it? Are we so enamored of griefing people that we subconsciously want EVE to flame out and die so we can sit down with some popcorn and watch it happen? In my darkest moments, I feel like this is exactly it. There are lots of current and former EVE players that seem positively gleeful at the prospect of watching CCP implode spectacularly.

Meanwhile, the people we are attracting are either being sold a bill of goods that EVE can't deliver on (B-R) or are only joining to get involved in the grief-fest themselves.

And if you're developing EVE Online, how can you look at this kind of thing and not be worried by it? I'll grant you that Star Citizen is rapidly turning into a joke, but the devs of Elite: Dangerous are showing quiet, steady competence. What they've got out there so far looks intriguing as hell. And even if it's not E:D, some developer sooner or later is going to come up with a game that is going to depopulate wide swaths of our niche little galaxy. It's inevitable at this point. Wouldn't it be nice to have some new blood coming in to replace them?

Assuming that at least a few of you do want that, how do we make it happen? Is it even possible?

180 comments:

Jester, with my professional background being in I-banking I have long considered myself an expert on deplorable human behavior. Thanks to being on educational sabbatical I found myself with some time and decided to try Eve. If any human being with an ounce of rational intelligence thinks that this game is not broken in a horrible way, then I pity them. And those rather clever folks who use the it's only a video game line to rationalize their appealing interactions with other human beings you have my deepest sympathies. A combination of horrendous management and what is now a player base made of what is the lowest grade of the online video game community, is in fact dooming eve to rapidly approaching death. The potential this game has/had is immense and there are a few good people out there but they are swimming upstream. You ask what can be done to avert the certain demise of eve, the answers is wholesale changes to the game that the minority filth who thrive on bringing misery to less informed/prepared and resourced individuals. Based on the performance of ccp to see the real problems in the game, the chances of this happening are 0. Enjoy it while you can as this product is in a permanent decline from which there will be no recovery.

Combining multiplayer sandbox gameplay with complete lack of personal responsibility or consequences to one's actions(thanks to alt and being able to just throw in-game money at almost every in-game "limitation" to make it go away) is fundamentally broken.

"lack of personal responsibility" For what exactly? Are you talking real life responsibilities? Or in game?

"consequences to one's actions" again, real life or in game? You're not making a cohesive point.

"alt and being able to just throw in-game money at almost every in-game"OK you're talking about in game here. Well yeah, that sort of reflects real life. Massive wealth = get away with a lot more than the poor folk. EvE reflects this too. But EvE is a game. Surely your contempt for real life must be off the scale given how you much you despise this in a game.

The difference between real life and a game is that you can choose to play a game. So saying that it's just as contemptible as real life is saying that there's no reason to play it. People play games to try other realities.

thats kind of the point you see there are those of us who do things in the real world and have no need to escape to a fantasy world with rules to protect us. This is why we play a sandbox game like eve. Some of us see a challenge in beating all those other assholes in the other games they can hide behind rules. In eve there's alot less places to hide. I mean its a simulation of how humans would act as immortals in space. You really think its very far off from what it aims to simulate? Think about what you are complaining most about and you will realize that you have a problem with people not so much the game itself.

What I find funny is the denial factor, by players and apparently CCP.

You, Jester, indicated in a post about the CSM9 elections that the sub numbers have dropped since last year... 5%, I think you speculated. Doesn't this bother anyone? Or do they think it is going to magically reverse itself?

There is nothing that can be done. CCP apparently wants a game for assholes only, and that is what they are continuing to push with each new expansion. If you don't want to play as an asshole, then GTFO of our game.

You can't blame the players when CCP approves and encourages this behavior. The complaints from the non-asshole community has been endless and loud, but CCP always turns a deaf ear.

CCP wants a game that makes them money. They are a business, and by Iceland standards a large one.

They also want Eve to be a game with as much freedom as possible, but only so long as it doesn't effect the first goal.

So, if those two things are true.. and I'm pretty sure they are... Then the onus is on CCP to fix those things, even if they result in less freedom in the game, so they can continue making money.

I know you know this, I've read your long take on all of this before. But unfortunately there seems to be two different players who use the name Malcanis. The long winded eloquent one that says insightful things, and the glib smartass.

I'd say CCP's top priority is having a game that makes them a lot of money. Absurd amounts of money if at all possible.

History says the way they went about this was, as you say, by creating a sandbox game with plenty of in-built freedom. As a result of this, the game is possibly populated by a lot of "whining assholes". So the question is:

Has CCP reached a point where they think the "freedom" model has run it's course and is now severely limiting them in making them huge amounts of money? Is this partly because of the "whining asshole" populous? Have CCP decided that all sandbox games would end up this way?

DUST 514 is not sandbox game. EvE Valkyrie? Nope. WoD - the game that has recently been canned, yep, that was billed as a sandbox game with "freedom" built in. Legion? No idea but I'm guessing "very limited" sandbox, one in which being an asshole is going to be close to impossible.

I could equally make an argument that EVE's rate of subscribtion increase was greatest before CCP put in so many restrictions.It's also telling that virtually all of the "griefing" that people complain about occurs in hi-sec, where such restrictions as EVE has are the tightest. I read far fewer complaints about "griefing" occurring in 0.0. Is it that the people most likely to complain are the ones who shelter in restricted space, or is it that being in unrestricted space gives more freedom to deal with problems, do you think?

(I'm excluding the obviously untrue possibility that the sociopathic mindless murder-slaves of 0.0 aren't griefers, because everyone who's never been to 0.0 knows that of course they are)

Of course most of the obvious griefing occurs in hi-sec - the 'law' of the land there encourages it.

Unlike any other kind of space, hi-sec prevents the victims of ganking from being pre-emptive about defending themselves. It also has so many odd little rules that it's easy for the experienced to exploit them to grief those new to the game.

An obvious one is can-flipping - someone steals your stuff and your only recourse is to shoot them. however, if you avail yourself of this right, they have the right to defend themselves - that's right, the criminal is now allowed to kill you, and they can call friends in too.

Add in that ganking has a small and easily calculable ISK cost and a minor cost in inconvenience, and it becomes clear that the only reason people who don't want to be griefed prefer hi-sec is because the costs of living elsewhere are even higher, by most people's reckoning.

Nullsec complains about different griefing mechanics. For instance, hundreds of thousands of words over the years have been written about cyno drops and afk cloakers. Possibly millions on afk cloakers alone.

Let's not get into the idea Null is the land of milk and honey where everyone happily Murder Death Kills each other, high fives, and types "gf" in local without a peep about griefing.

Malcanis you're implying player behaviour isn't changed by game design but of course it very much is. There's at least 20 years of research into how but simply reflecting that Eve players behave differently to Wow or even to other sandbox games shows this.

Yeah eve has been profitable and adding subs for a long time now one data point suggest a 5% drop in the playerbase. And all the sudden the game isn't making money? U guys are kidding right? You realize this u gotta have 10mil sub crap is exactly what's wrong with modern mmorpgs right? Not everyone has to like the game and ccp got by for a long time on a lot less then 500k subs. I also think its funny that ppl seem to think 5% less subs means ccp will make less.money like they dont know someone in game that never pves and buys plex for income.

You've hit on this "new blood" theme quite a bit, and in some ways I agree and others disagree. SWG made the huge mistake of focusing entirely on trying to gain new players, rather than cater to their existing player base and it killed the game. The execs at SOE afterwards said that was a mistake and that you have to cater to the playerbase you have, while finding opportunities within the existing framework to appeal to new players. Trying to take the trolling and scamming and bad aspects of eve out of eve will likely result in the game losing its edge and be catastrophic.

With that being said...Rise's work on the NPE is exciting. And yes the game needs things for new players to hang their hats on. But if they cant handle a couple trolls (which are in every game whether the company supports that playstyle or not), they're not cut out for eve.

But the key to new players is to fix the problems the current players are experiencing. New players are more liable to stick around when sov doesn't suck, lowsec has a purpose, complexes and other pve activites are overhauled and added to, etc etc. and don't hear from vets that those systems suck and the game sucks so just quit and give me your stuff.

Trying to fix social problems is virtually impossible. Fix the systems and players will find reason to stay despite trolls.

Wow i must play a different game... Do you guys have a corp that do stuff in group or do you do some activity with a few in-game friends? Do you have some friends in-game to speak to or do stuff with? What's your typical day in eve to have such a bad experience?

"Now, imagine that the only real, tangible goal in this MMO is to make money...."

This thoughtful, incisive, troubling review is a nicely written, well constructed example of the age-old "I tried to play EVE like it was every other grinder MMO where the object of the exercise is to make numbers on your character sheet get bigger, and I had a shitty time of it".

The only 'goal' in EVE is interacting with other players: both the ones you like, and the ones you don't. Money, skills, ships, yadda yadda, are just means and tool and gates towards that. The other players ARE the game; everything else is just scenery and toys.

To be fair, the reviewer eventually gets around to just your point. I quote:“Granted, there's a lot of human interaction to be had in keeping other players from destroying your investments or maybe in finding the most effective way to destroy someone else's investments, but that's just not my idea of a good time.”

I think the reviewer was hoping for an MMO similar to Golf where, once the mechanics are mastered, you can set an early Saturday morning tee time, meet up with your buddies and start the weekend off in a gentle agreeable manner. Instead he discovered an MMO more akin to Rugby where you can still meet up with your buddies on Saturday morning but nothing gentle is afoot.

Jester’s always had an uneasy relationship with Eve’s Rugby like nature. I’ve actually hassled him about such uneasiness in the past. If I may ask you Malcanis, (since you’ve actually met Jester face to face), is his unease about the game he loves apparent from the get go? I ask this because Jester keeps creeping up on the brutal aspects of Eve again and again and again in his blog but never actually makes a heartfelt decision to either buy in or opt out. Instead, he appears to keep trying to finesse the question and thereby avoid the hard decision. It’s strangely evasive.

"I don't understand why people seem to think Eve is this magical, be-all and end-all game where anything is possible and dreams come true. Fact: many facets of the game are player-controlled. Does that make the game better? Again, not really. Eve's community is no better than any other gaming community. Many would argue that it's even worse. All it means is this:

1. The very rich can manipulate the market.2. A council of a few CEO players meets somewhere at some time to discuss things that you probably have no reason to care about.3. If you travel through nulsec, you might have to give money to whatever corporation controls the area (if they don't blow you up just for being there).4. Other players can and will try to ruin your day at any opportunity."

Let me summarise: "a bloo bloo bloo the game didn't tell me I was awesome for being an absolutely mediocre and unexceptional player who never did anything that anyone cared about"

That, when you get right down to it is the problem that this reviewer and those like have with EVE: they're so used to an MMO gaming environment that constantly sucks your dick and tells you how amazing you are for killing 10 rats that when they finally encounter one of the few where you only get told you're awesome if you do something that is ACTUALLY awesome, they get such a reality-punch that all they can do is sit down and cry.

He even throws in the tired old "there's nothing to do except watch your skills go up".

Sorry Jester, while this guy may well be representative of a large section of the gamer community at large, I absolutely disagree that "the writer (a) understands EVE Online, and (b) is exactly the kind of thoughtful gamer we want to attract to EVE Online" in EVE."

He neither understands EVE, nor is he thoughtful, nor am I interested in seeing him attracted to EVE, since when you parse through his complaints and remodel EVE to address them, what you're left with is, well... SW:TOR but with spaceships.

Spot on Malcanis. I think Jester dropped a bollock on this one. Lots of "agreements" on amazon / steam do not make for valid reasoning or accurate reviews.

I get the impression that the reviewer does not understand the sandbox concept and the freedom it allows you. He clearly states that he tried all of the scripted PVE options available. He didn't like them. Fair enough, they aren't very good. But I get the impression he didn't really try much of the player generated content...

"In PvP, the plodding point-and-click combat system ensures that the actual fighting is no more exciting than running those mundane missions."

He simply doesn't get it and probably didn't try hardly any PvP. But why didn't he? Because of this:

"the only real, tangible goal in this MMO is to make money."

followed by

"PvPing regularly is also a bad financial decision that requires substantial investment with very little return..."

Yep, Risk. He does not want any. At all. He only wants to see his wallet balance increase. For him, the thought of it decreasing would be him "losing" at EvE.

But the real killer is this part:

"but hey, wtf else are you going to do?"

If he believes that about EvE, he must surely believe that about every single MMO / game in existence.

People like this call themselves "achievers". They love collecting points, unlocks, and performing arbitrary developer set tasks. Things like setting their own goals or overcoming obstacles that are not expressly designed for them to overcome are intolerable for them even in a single player game.

I think it's more that he's used to your average MMO with well defined goals and a clear progression path.

The only thing CCP can do to keep a "thoughtful player" like this - the one who thinks that "the only real, tangible goal in this MMO is to make money" and that PvP amounts to "a bad financial decision" - is to Trammel EVE, possibly with a side of NGE.

I have to admit, the part where he claims to have participated in "corporate wars, factional wars, wormhole expeditions, incursions, you name it" combined with "stopped playing after ~130 hours and never looked back" made me think he knows a thing or two about trolling.

It hardly matters that a couple of the posts Jester cites are anecdotes at best and trolls at worst. I'm sure that EVE's defenders can dark-knight their way through a take-down or dismissal of any one anonymous post on the Internet.

But none will dare take on the bulk of the anecdotes and read to the point where they become hard data, because the overall picture does indeed lean in the direction Jester is pointing. And whether or not you take issue with some former player's or troll's description of EVE gameplay, you are still left with the sucking chest wound that is EVE's *reputation*.

Reputation is a big part of any prospective player's decision to try out the game, and even to subscribe--for as the OP notes, a trial is long gone before a player really figures out what the game is like. If we want subscriptions to climb (and players are forgiven if this is not a concern; EVE only needs to last as long as any one of us wants to play), the widespread terrible reputation is going to need to change.

How does that change happen? Through anecdotes. Through the experiences of new players starting *now*, and whether or not they are treated with a modicum of decency and comradeship. Keep EVE cold and harsh, and our game will continue to enjoy cold, harsh subscription rates, and development efforts that are proportional.

"Oh, those eight hundred reviews were all trolls" gets EVE nowhere. If you care about the game's future, you have to care about its reputation. If you treat newer players with the dismissal I see in this sub-thread, I know in which direction subscriptions will keep going.

Chess is slow and boring, if you want it to be played by 10m people a week, you need to make it easier, faster and simpler, if you care about the future of chess we must change it NOW...

or not...

I would rather play a 500,000 sub eve than a 2m sub eve theme park, and I've only been here for 6 months.

I agree that the newbro experience needs to be improved, maybe starter areas where extra protection is provided, but the game should not be significantly altered to cater to the NPC generated instant gratification crowd.

Yup Malcanis, you keep on believing everything is fine in the Eve universe.

PCU is not down, subs are not down, null sec is perfect the way it is, griefing is just a way to encourage the bad players they should leave the game, the null sec cartels don't control the CSM and the CSM does not control CCP, etc, etc.

Yup, the direction the game is going in is perfect, and CCP should double down or triple down on giving the null sec cartels even more wealth and power in the game, while increasing the ways the very rich, very bored, and very evil can grief weaker players. It has worked so well so far.

I'm not calling this guy a troll. I am 100% certain that he's perfectly sincere and genuine. It's just that he's also wrong because he's making some gigantic unexamined assumptions about what EVE is supposed to be and then assuming that EVE's failure to comply with those assumptions is a problem with EVE rather than with his assumptions.

What can be done? Well I'm against turning EVE into space-WoW for a variety of good reasons, the strongest of which is that I don't want to play a highly regulated themepark game.

I think CCP can and should do a much better job of clearly messaging what EVE is supposed to be and more importantly, explicitly explaining how it's NOT space-WoW. Generally people react well when they get what they expect even if it isn't exactly what they (think) they want. People who naively join EVE and expect that they can mine/mission/trade unmolested in hi-sec get mad because their expectations were not met.

The tutorials for instance could do a much better job of explaining that trust is earned, not assumed in EVE, and that CONCORD won't help you if you didn't check the number of zeros in a buy order and sell your CNR for 4.5M ISK, there's no PvP flag, etc.

CCP's advertising could emphasise that all space is "unsafe" space.

CCP are already working on the corp interface and a big part of the project is to improve the way that corps advertise to make it easier to find a suitable corp.

And finally, the community itself can take some responsibility for its own nature rather than just whining in the comment sections of 3rd party blogs. I've helped numerous new players over the years on an ad-hoc basis. Some made it, some didn't v0v. But now I'm involved in a new project to be a little more organised and help low SP players find a place in 0.0.

So I'm doing something to help players understand and thrive in EVE as it is with all its vicious bloody glorious freedoms. I'm implacably opposed to simply moaning at CCP until they turn it into Softplay MMO #3,742.

EVE is space-WoW already. The difference is, that instead of the raiders (or whatever group Blizzard caters to most ferociously) CCP caters to griefers (griefing options without significant or lasting consequences). In both cases they made assumption on what will keep the butter on their bread and... while for long time it worked, it has started to fail. But yeah, CCP has for a long time shown in their actions that EVE is not true sandbox, but instead it is PvP themepark that has only been branded as sandbox.

"I'm not calling this guy a troll. I am 100% certain that he's perfectly sincere and genuine. It's just that he's also wrong because he's making some gigantic unexamined assumptions about what EVE is supposed to be and then assuming that EVE's failure to comply with those assumptions is a problem with EVE rather than with his assumptions."

This works pretty well if you change to whom it is directed to Malcanis. To be fair it works well for a lot of people who ever wrote a line about Eve.

No, I don't really believe the guy is a troll. Just an amusing thought, given his overly broad generalizations with regard to the rest of the player base and a blatant attempt to pad his resume to appear more legit. How do you keep a player like that? Well, as been said above, you turn EVE into a boilerplate MMO. Standard leveling experience, loot, achievements, structured end game activities with more epic loot. Simplify, praise, reward, simplify some more, praise, reward. That's the only game he'd accept. Can't say I'm interested, though. Got my WoW account on standby, thank you very much.

@ "Enough anecdotes = hard data" Anon. Handpicked anecdotes make for biased data sets. Jester is cherrypicking data points that fit his narrative from a pile of data coming from a group that has self-selected by caring enough to publish their opinions in the first place. It's likely done to illustrate a point, but it's still about as biased a sample as you can get. Is this group representative of new players, though? We know - and this is hard data - that the last two large jumps in trial numbers happened after the mainstream media carried a couple of stories on massive battles in EVE. The headlines, somewhat disingenuously, featured players losing thousands of dollars worth of ships. Does it seem reasonable to suggest that those new players had no idea coming in that ships get blown up in EVE? Or did they come to grief and found themselves on the receiving end? Or did they just get bored? Real data would be nice.

@Malcanis,You don't have to make Eve a themepark to change the griefer-centered perception/truth(?). I'm not a professional game designer, and I'm sure there are lots of different ways this could be done, but I would simply approach it from this angle: Without actually restricting actions, is it measurably more profitable in-game to grief or to live peaceably or even white-knight it? Which should be the player statement is developing towards: "I'll take my lumps and play the bad guy, cause it's a game and I find that fun," or "I'll take my lumps and play the good guy, cause it's a game and I find that fun."I suppose an equitable balance could be achieved too, it doesn't have to lean in one favor or the other.-Bantara

Malcanis, before you start writing off people as those you don't want playing this game, just keep in mind that there are plenty of EVE players who are not interested in seeing you attracted to EVE either.

I think this actually stands to be a very interesting point. Does EvE in fact have enough mechanics that support doing the "right" thing, or at least something that benefits the non-combat centric corp? Presently there is no motivation to step in against, say, high sec war dec corps outside of mercenary jobs. Additionally the corps that get war dec'd generally just dock up and don't fight. Neither do they usually hire mercs, they just wait it out. I suppose one could be motivated to fight a corps aggressors out of principle, but that's about it. I think it would be worth a look to think about the roles we want corps to have in all areas of space, including usage of the area and benefits with the local faction, and try to design mechanics that allow a corp to protect its interests. I'm not suggesting full blown sov a la nullsec of course, but something that promotes a corp to compete in an area, and compete with other highsec corps over resources or access on a small scale. Highsec POCO's kind of did this, but I think we need more. That and a revamp of war decs that require some kind of reason for the aggression outside of simply "fights". But admittedly my view of highsec PvP is that there should be some reason, that is a meaningful conflict of interest for combat, or pure piracy in the form of suicide ganking; as opposed to the current state of "declare war to see if we can catch some kills against the unprepared, laugh as they run to the station and hide for a week".

Gevlon Goblin is a very successful white knight. Of course to the random Goon who gets ganked on the Jita undock he's an evil ganker but his recent activities have been set up very specifically to white knight against the CFC.

I had this exact conversation today with another long time EVE Player. I disagree with you, Jester, about Star Citizen being a joke - its in frikking ALPHA.

What does CCP need to do to save EVE?

Stop catering to the fear mongering anti-incarna assholes.

Stop catering to the grief fest that is EVE in highsec

Stop catering to the crowd that thinks its OK to troll someone out of the game, like a certain someone you've written about has.

No, it doesn't need to be WoW, but EVE doesn't treat new players nicely. If it isn't fun, nobody will play it.

The only reason some of us log in anymore is to do manufacturing, add a plex to our accounts from our profits and log off for another month after setting skills.

The moment any other game - Star Citizen prime among them - becomes more entertaining... we are gone. If CCP collapsed the day after and EVE died because of it, I cannot honestly say I would give a fuck, nor that I would particularly miss most of the people I have ran across in the game.

He doesnt enjoy the game dude., but he keeps hoping he will some day if a miracle happens and ccp changes it attitude. meanwhile its not costing him anything to keep that skill queue ticking, just a bit of time.

I play eve for more than 10 years, multiple accounts, and I see the point of that guy writing a review. And similar to this I explain my friends who are willing to try EVE - be ready for harsh environment and 90% of the trolling convos in local. Average attitude of an EVE player is catastrophic.

Alos what do I see when looking at the EVE fanfest? Drunk people on alliance panel - some are hardly staying put. How CCP allows that I ask?

Remember Mittens and his ban? While mentioning him, he calls our ally EXO and the first question was, "Do you know who am I?"...

That's the attitude, bully the smaller ones, talk trash in local - when talking trash don't you realize that you are also expressing your mentality/personality through that despite you are anonymous to some extent? Do some players think what/how they communicate?

When I started a new account for 1 EUR, first thing when I undocked in a fresh new character, was a duel invite in front of the station - WTF? Nice welcome to the new players I would say.

Thanks to God that we have some good people/organizations around that we don't lose every new player that comes to the game.

On the two extreme's are the too mean for words "L33t pvp you should never be safe crowd" vs the "I am a bunny and that's ok" carebears.

Fact is we have to cater for the whole spectrum. I was in a null sec alliance - fact is I cannot devote enough time to the game to sustain that status. I had odd and erratic playing times. This means I had to become a loner, doing loner stuff. Unfortunately in the end there is nothing I could strive for this way and quit. Even stuff like rvb becomes rinse and repeat.

Suggestion 1: Cater for the loner. Let me build my own stargate to somewhere cool (jove space?) in safety. Let me build my own "immune to attack" station/POS there. So what if you L33T pvp'rs can't attack it? As it stands you cannot attack me (or my stargate or my station) anyway! So what if I do not create content for you? Again as it stands I'm quitting the game and as such create no content for you anyway? As a person with very limited time to play, there is no way for me to have a POS or ever defend it in a war dec - why should this exclude me from having this?

Suggestion 2: Cater for the 100Bil officer fit raven. Why not make it ultra safe? So what if this guy does not provide content to the PVP crowd? How much content is he providing now? Have an "even greener button", that makes you immune from any and all attacks in space by anybody. In return place restrictions. You cannot go into low/null. You may not contract anybody that isn't on "even greener mode". You can go to normal green mode, but then you man not return to "even greener mode" for a longish set time (try to discourage hauling alts etc). I like your idea of carriers in highsec - can only be done on "even greener mode". Cannot be sold to anybody that isn't on "even greener mode". The specific carrier cannot ever go to low/null even if player changes to normal green status (sell to even greener mode player or recycle baby...). Sure, allow "even greener mode" players to have highsec cyno's why not (nice practice for eventual null)? Just limit all fleets that "even greener mode" players can join to that of "ever greener players only"

Suggestion 3: L33T PVP crowd holds a lot of sway, but seriously what do you gain from NOT having these guys in the game? Some idle CCP server CPU? Realise that there are other playstyles for other people. Carebears, that cut's both ways...

Suggestion 4: Lower the grind. In null we had SRP. Nice. On my own in low/high I had no such thing. With limited playing time, I started to resent the grind to replace ships - to drive conflict and fun, ships need to be cheaper in terms of the grind to obtain it.

Suggestion 5: Do away with skill attribute implants or allow easier clone jumps. I had a goal that relied on some skills. To get there quicker I had a set of +5 implants. Expensive clone means I did not go into low sec when I wanted to. Would be ok if I could just clone jump into empty/another clone, but the 24 hour timer sucks - I would jump and because of RL not be able to play for a whole week (not even to jump to +5 clone) - a week without my +5's made for a lot longer training. Perhaps allow clone jump to another clone in the same solar system without the 24h wait?

Every one of your ideas is to remove risk, without removing reward. In eve risk should = reward

I would rather they started a new server with your "Even Greener mode" as the only option, so no pvp at all anywhere, than pollute tranquillity with it. Then you can go mine there, fly around bashing npc’s for a month or 2, get bored, and leave, without causing a splash.

But I would rather they didn’t do either and people accepted that eve is a harsh game, not for everyone, and after you give new players a suitable introduction to the game in relative safety (which is what is missing atm), its up to them to find their own way in the box.

By stating that, it is clear that you missed the point. So what if there are 100k "Even greener mode" players on the same server? This is the one big fat elephant in the room no L33T pvp'er has been able to explain to me. I mean really, so what?

Is it such a stretch of imagination to see that once these guys have hung around for 6 months they might go to normal green to enter low? Or not? Is it so hard to see that the revenue from these subscriptions makes CCP and our game stronger?

Is it so hard to see that due to the input fallacy a lot of these guys will stay subscribed and may do other things?

Is it really so hard to grasp that this in no way diminishes real pvp? Face it shooting/ganking carebears in shitfit pve ships isn't a challenge at all. Why then would you complain?

"In eve risk should = reward"

Really? According to whom? Who are he/she/it to say? I think it is a narrow minded view and it is possible to cater for a wider audience here without too much impact.

dog, have you ever stepped back and thought about why you are playing an MMO? Almost everything you say suggests you'd be far more suited to a single player game. There are literally millions of them around.

Forcing EvE to be "all things to all men" sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, especially given the diversity and expanse of the gaming world.

Because these Greener players would be competing for the same resources as non greener, if they can mine the same roids, or ever bring the fruits of thier Greener mode to none green game, they would out complete as they have zero risk, winning the Market PvP game.

maybe make it so you can port across from one server to the other, but no resources go with you.

you say "real pvp" IMO real PvP is when you log in and press the undock button. Undock in a untanked hulk in 0.5 without support and you failed PvP on the fitting screen and on the ship choice.

and the devs say risk should balance reward.

Look at the dev blog on Building better worlds

"Any industry feature must be balanced around our risk versus reward philosophy" No risk... No reward

"Because these Greener players would be competing for the same resources as non greener, if they can mine the same roids, or ever bring the fruits of thier Greener mode to none green game, they would out complete as they have zero risk, winning the Market PvP game."

No because following your own risk vs reward thesis (and my original post), they will be severely limited in what they can do.

Introduce a high tax on these guys to negate them winning the market pvp game. High sec is already nerfed to the point of unprofitably - "encouraging" people to go of "even greener" to green only. You could even make it so this account (all chars) can then not return to "even greener"...

This progression together with keeping your skill points and assets (not to mention curiosity about 0.0 and low sec) would be my primary reason to keep these players on the same server. I don't see any benefit whatsoever in keeping them on 'n different server.

Your definition of real PvP is yours, others differ. I reiterate - there is no sport in shooting noobs in shitfit pve ships - it is beyond me that anybody should think it should be allowed if said noob feels he is not ready to compete.

So your idea is to get people to play a game sold on its "do anything" tag and when they start they are severely limited...

I agree new players need more protection, or education, but that wont be solved by making un killable switch, it'll just mean their first loss is a faction battleship they spent ages grinding in greener mode as they have zero idea of PvP fits, a better newbo experience is needed, not just enforced protection.

Give new players the space to gain the knowledge they need to fit a ship and avoid getting killed, if they don't like the work that involves, Eve simply isn't for them (for example, using dscan and not being AFK, balancing yield and tank when mining).

A starter system off grid to experienced players, one of the mining tutorials warns about bandits warping in on unsuspecting miners, here is a venture, it trains on dscan "when you see then on dscan warp out..." if you die, you rinse and repeat until you are a dscan pro.

Similar on fits, they offer you a choice of fittings during a set of missions and if you pick stupid ones, you get NPC WTF PAWNED... rinse repeat, all in cheap NPC provided ships

Then they move to New Eden proper and its up to them to use what they have learnt, or quit if its too much hard work.

Eve's problem isn't that griefers are getting rewarded, but that non-griefers are not. I'm currently a lowsec "pirate" doing mindless killing because that's one of the few activities that has human interaction. Like most activities that requires human interaction it involves griefing. Compare a list of activites that requires human interaction that includes griefing and compare it to a list of activites that requires human interaction without griefing. On the griefing side you have pretty much all of lowsec, nullsec, w-space and a lot of highsec. On the non-griefing side you have incursions. Things like mining operations don't count because human interaction is not encouraged, but an obsticle you try to avoid with multi-boxing and such.

I've always wanted to build my own industrial empire instead of just mindless griefing in lowsec, but mining in highsec is comparable to a job at McDonald's and in lowsec, nullsec and W-space mining is comparable to a job at McDonald's in the middle of a prison. Hell, I thought the bittervets were exaggerating when they said lowsec mining is horrible, so I spent half a year making a 50 man lowsec mining corporation to attempt to prove them wrong. I loved every minute of it. From finding creative ways to recruit while avoiding spies and awoxers, to making spreadsheets and organize mining operations and roles. But eventually it turned out the bittervets were correct, and I was wrong, so I went back to mindless griefing because there's nothing else I can do besides that, quitting or playing Eve Online: Singleplayer Edition.

So why can't CCP fix mining and other non-grief activites so they're worth doing and encourages or requires human interaction? I'm sure it would attract players like me that prefer to build sandcastles instead of tearing them down. I already wrote* a forum thread suggesting how CCP could fix mining to make it interesting. Basically make ore yield dynamic per system to make risk/reward self-balancing. You would have a valid reason to mine in lowsec and active, dangerous systems instead of the most dead-end and empty system you can find.

"People love to troll. "Collecting tears" is one of the main driving forces that keeps many people playing the game. Once you have a decent ship and skillbase, it's very, very easy to troll less experienced players." This is simply not true. The large majority of players I meet do not troll. Especially not newer players! I and most of my friends go out of our way to help new players whenever possible, be it free stuff or advice. You just hear about that one guy that pulled off a scam, not the thousands of people that didn't.

So yes, Eve is full of griefing, but not because Eve is full of griefers, but because there's just not enough non-griefing activties.

I'm a newer player in a corporation of newer players. The going in Eve is rather "upstream." The other players, one can ignore or treat like an AI. We use "block" a lot. And we avoid socializing with others.

One of the two problems with Eve, and why we would (will) leave, is just as many have said -- bad behavior is rewarded at every turn while countering "good behavior" mechanics are being eliminated (the all important "standing" mechanic) or don't exist.

There was a Blog Banter on "Heroes". All but a remarkable few lauded assholes.

The second big problem is that there is no "space." With space newer players could play the game. Instead, CCP seems by design to funnel the inexperienced into the gunsights of vets. This is no fun. It does not allow newer players to get their legs.

There is room in Eve for all playing types. Perhaps CCP should work on breaking the barriers which prevent the PvP assholes from shooting each other all day, everyday. And perhaps CCP should work on the "good guy" mechanics to properly balance out the beautifully intelligent sci-fi which Eve Online is based upon.

"bad behavior is rewarded at every turn while countering "good behavior" mechanics are being eliminated"

Rewarding opportunities for sociopaths:- you can ninja salvage / loot for tears&profit- you can steal mission-specific items for tears & ransom- you can gank for tears & profit- you can scam for tears & profit...

Rewarding opportunities for altruists or simple "nice guys" (emphasis on rewarding):-(incursions back in the day when they weren't so elitist)-?

My Background: I was CEO of a corp that coached newbie-corps through their first grief-wardecs (time & isk sink that got me burned out).Every mechanic in EvE is to foster anti-social play.Did you know that, when assist someone with their war (alli system) and actually fly WITH them, remote repairs from one corp to the other flag you as suspect?

1. contrary to the laws and customs of society.2. not sociable or wanting the company of others.

For definition one, you're in EvE and as such are a part of it's customs, "laws" (EULA maybe?) and society. You would only be antisocial if you weren't conforming to the norm that exists in EvE.

For definition 2. Yeah stuff like missioning & mining that are just as easily accomplished solo and provide no incentive to do them sociably do indeed foster an antisocial approach. Bounty hunting for example, is by definition more sociable as you have to at least interact with another being.

I have a feeling that you'd rather pretend this wasn't the case though.

Eve is a "beefy" game, trying to make it appeal to vegetarians will make the carnivores walk away, and the vegetarians will not like the remnants of beef, closing down the whole farm. (I can get involved in the analogy as well!).

I don't need to approach that guy. I played the game. For years. I quit. I have real life friends who did the same.

The reason? Right now we have very little time to play, an hour or so every other week. This is just because of RL issues. Due to this I'm worthless to a corp, I can't do any meaningful pvp (rvb only fun for so long).

If I had a meaningful pve quest that I could do solo, whenever - it would keep me subscribed. I would indulge in that until such a time as circumstances changed, I had more time and could rejoin a corp and alliance.

In the mean time, CCP gets revenue from two more subscriptions, and I don't even clog up the sever CPU (much).

This goes for a lot of my RL friends too. Sometimes you play eve to relax, pass the time and could do without the stress of having to look over your shoulder for gankers all the time. Sometimes you don't want that - you want a fight - I used to be in a ninja salvaging corp.

There is nothing wrong with either, I am trying to get people to see both sides of the coin. Which brings me to

"hopefully you'll see my point of not wasting time and resources to cater to everybody's personal tastes."

"Sometimes you play eve to relax, pass the time and could do without the stress of having to look over your shoulder for gankers all the time"

Stick to 1.0 space in a tank fit Skiff and you can be 99.99999% sure of a Gank free life, same goes for a mission boat, go for a tank fit battleship with no more than T2 fittings and you'll be 99.99999% safe even in 0.5.

What more do you want? you already have the means at your disposal to keep yourself AFK safe...

"PLEASE do not be one of 'those guys' that takes what Ripard says for granted!!! If you read the Steam review, it has NOTHING to do with Ripard's 'omg non-consensual PVP has to go' point of view."

1)Actually I think Ripard is on record saying that he opposes the "'omg non-consensual PVP has to go' point of view."2)As far as the Steam review goes, there is a lot there one can nit pick about, but (i) that guy raised a number of very valid points as well, (ii)the review is very central to the retaining/gaining new subscribers debate. Just have a look at that forum thread - how many people are on record that they will not take up the game because of that?

Didn't want those subscribers anyway? How does not having more subscribers help you?

And again here we go with the same question. How do we increase the size of the player base? So you went out and read some reviews that merely validated what you already know. "EVE" is harsh, cruel and full of assholes that only exist because the system is designed to feed the young to them. SO CHANGE THE DAMN GAME! If CCP’s only concern is the number of subscriptions and they want that number to rise then make the SECURITY STATUS of a system really mean something. Start pushing the bad people of EVE who eat the young out of the “safe” spaces and out into the “dangerous spaces” of Low Sec and Null Sec. Let’s make CONCORD mean something! NO going into highsec if your sec status is below xxx pick a number. And a Red Flashy in JITA! Give me a break! Those Concord cops circle the gate for hours at a time bored out of their collective mind but they will ignore a red flashy in a pod. SCREW that! POD his ass back to low sec. Trolling JITA local all day long …. LOLs give them a timer, I don’t care how long or short but at the end of that time BAMMMM they wake up in low sec, security set to -5. NOW lets see you rat your way back up to +.01 so you can travel back to Highsec or better yet let’s see just how tough the human playing this toon is! How about some time out here with the REAL players of EVE, see how long you stay in the game getting your ass podded every time you undock here in lowsec as you try to rat your trolling ass back up to highsec standards so you can go back to picking on the 1st graders. Shoot someone in 1.0 space without a wardec BAAAMMMM -10 sec and you wake up in a random NULL SEC station “IN A ROOKIE SHIP” now let’s see just how damn tough that human is…. Can he negotiate his way into the locals corporation so he can rat his sec status back???? Maybe he is just so damn good a L33T highsec PVP that all my null sec breathern will just run from his rookie ship as he undocks and swings his GIANT Epeen around… or maybe he will just RAGE QUIT because he is being told how to play the game…. What’s your bet?

Now how do we teach children in school? We don’t just throw the kindergartener’s into high school with that 18yr old freshman now do we? So let’s get some training corporations set up in highsec. And I’m not talking about EVE UNI, I mean a CCP run corporation that takes in the new kids and teaches them “ALL” the basics. If you wardec this corp you wardec CONCORD! AND IT COSTS nothing to do that, how’s that for a stick in the ass for a wardec’ing corporation who just wants to play in highsec for laughs . CCP would find running a corporation like that very difficult so take so high standing players… whooooo? Find them they are around and have them run the corporations for perks… plex maybe… as a suggestion I mean get real here this is an easy thing to do “WE” CCP, the players and all of us who love this game could make this work if we wanted to. BUT CCP has to nut up and make this “THE WAY IT’S GOING TO BE” HTFU and if you bitter vets can’t adapt, I think most of us can, then please U tube your own personal RAGE quiting VIDEO so we can all enjoy your tears.Bottom line JESTER if you want more players to join this game make HIGH sec WHAT THEY WANT IT TO BE!!!! There is no other way. The PVP L33Ts/Griefers/WARDEC’s Corps/NULLSEC power mongers/WORMHOLE lovers and all the rest of us WHO ALREADY PLAY EVE and haven’t left yet will just have to adjust, adapt, and overcome these changes! And any who can’t need to HTFU or RAGE QUIT whichever is the easiest for them to stomach.

They could change the spaceships to fictional races in human form, and call them orcs and stuff like that, make the stuff you get indestructible, make it so you can choose when to PvP and when not too, make PvE the centre of the game...

I'm sure you'll get millions of subscriptions, but you won’t be playing Eve any more. And I think there are already games that cater for that part of the market...

now a better introduction for new players is something I could support, maybe an area with a one way star gate, so its only new players, with a better tutorial system, that you play around in, and then got sling shotted into new eden onto the sister of eve epic arc...

My personal fav idea for a better NPE is an advanced tutorial with players actively hunting you in highsec, with wardec mechanics.

This would be great because:

1) People that absolutely cannot stomach non-consensual PVP in any form would avoid subbing. No point in CCP wasting their time until they ragequit anyway after the first suicide gank or wardec

2) People that enjoy PVP would then go straight to a PVP Corp, skipping all the useless highsec grind that many of the current happy PVPers did in their first months (regretting it afterwards)

3) People that do not enjoy PVP, but are willing to accept it as an important part of the game, would finally UNDERSTAND FROM DAY ONE what it's all about (hint: no big deal, especially if you're flying cheap) and avoid feeling understandbly ripped-off by the words 'high security space' when non-consensual PVP finally finds them some months in

"Assuming that at least a few of you do want that, how do we make it happen?"

Huh? Stop playing it? To quote: "... Jester hates non-consensual PvP even though I've said at least ten times this isn't true". Non-consensual PVP is griefing. You have met the enemy and it is you and such stuff...

Ever watched a game of football? No player consents to being tackled; they try like hell to avoid being tackled. Their team will win or lose depending on how well they succeed.

But! They have willingly put themselves into a scenario that explicitly involves the risk of being tackled. No one will take any football player seriously if he complains that he just wants to run around on the pitch with the ball and could these sociopathic bullies "LEAVE ME ALONEEEE!!!!11"

Yet for some reason we're supposed not to laugh at people who join EVE (which is after all advertised as a place where scams and ganks can and do happen) and do the same.

Even in football it is illegal to tackle players in certain situations. Sure you can do it anyway but that results in on field (penalty) and even sometimes off the field (two week ban + fine) consequences. I even know of some football players that ended up in jail because of in game actions (was deemed assault).

What's happening in EVE is that we're pitting 15 years old in front of the NFL best teams.

Then we wonder why they don't stick around and tell their friend not to come.

It also doesn't help that most of the NFL players out there are truly insensitive pricks that will laugh out the 15 years old on their way to the exit.

Reverse the tables, just for kicks.

If there was a vast majority of helpful players catering to the new blood and trying their best to make their experience fun and constructive, the ratio of good vs bad reviews would be the exact opposite what we have now.

I think you all missed Malcanis' point. I believe the crux of his 'analogy' is this:

A footballer must surely accept that he is likely to be tackled at some point whilst playing football. He would be laughed at were he to protest that he should not be tackled.

Now contrast with what happens in EvE:

Someone coming in to EvE must surely accept that their ship is likely to be blown up at some point (or get "griefed", whatever that means) whilst they are playing.

Yet for some reason, it's deemed perfectly fine to complain about someone attacking your ship and protest that this should not be possible. Oh and it's also apparently fine to call those who shoot your ship, assholes, because they must be, right? Just like those footballers who tackle other footballers.

"I think you all missed Malcanis' point..." beware of the "above-average effect".

Further to that, your exclusion bias is at work making you see what you want to see because it supports your case. Of course the rest of us are prone to our own exclusion bias and as such not perfect, but I will put forward this:

False analogy:

In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether they both have property P.

Source: (http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/falsean.htm)

So it may not be, "you all missed Malcanis' point", but that the analogy was seen as false, effectively making his point moot:

Something along the lines of:1 = a number (football has tackles)2 = a number (EVE has tackles)therefore 1=2 (football = EVE)

In this way we falsely conclude that football (without even disclosing which variant thereof), a real life contact sport is now equal to a video game, and rules applicable to the one now MUST be applicable to the other.

Yes there can be some contrived examples of similarities, but by enlarge I would suggest that there are more differences between the two. Weak coincidental similarities is thus not very helpful in the discussion as to what exactly the rules of conduct of the videogame (or the football game for that matter) should be.

As often happen when someone uses an analogy, the other party will spot an obvious differences in the 2 subjects of the analogy and proclaim some sort of "victory". They equate the analogy as meaning the 2 things are equal in all aspects and all contexts.

Both you and Jester have fallen foul of this logical fallacy. The odd thing is, in your reply to me you even stated what may happen:

"In this way we falsely conclude that football (without even disclosing which variant thereof), a real life contact sport is now equal to a video game"

Yet that is precisely what you did in your reply to Malcanis by stating an obvious glaring difference between EvE and football that lacked relevant context to the discussion. You were apparently aware of what happens when people misunderstand what an analogy is or the context surrounding it, yet you used that as your defence (or attack) toward Malcanis.

As I have learned, avoid analogies if at all possible for they appear as easy prey to the weak who can state a difference between the two subjects and claim "victory".

Jester even said

"If EVE were football.."

Hilarious strawman attempt or an obvious ignorance as to what an analogy is. No one was claiming that EvE = Football except for those aiming to discredit Malcanis' post.

Anyway, your reply to me wholly focussed on my alleged "bias" and why that made my reply or interpretation of Malcanis' post flawed. You managed to avoid mentioning EvE (except for once when equating it to football) and completely avoided the point I made about EvE.

So, here's a request to you - please focus on the discussion around EvE online rather than any misconceptions you have about me, alleged bias or definitions and semantics of words. We can all play those games if we wish, but they are often futile and this is a predominantly EvE blog, this being a discussion about EvE. Let's get it back to that.

So, In the hope that you will attempt to answer my previously made point and get the discussion back to EvE online, I'll reiterate without any mention of Malcanis' analogy. If you do not understand it, please tell me which part and I'll try and clarify...

Fact: EvE is well known for being a PvP centric sandbox MMO. It is (in)famous for being notoriously difficult and for want of a better phrase "cut throat" in it's social gameplay. Almost every promotional video and big headline making in-game event all point to this. It's a massive part of EvE's USP.

So why, when someone voluntarily enters into playing EvE and plays for some considerable time, should we take them seriously when they complain about the very thing that EvE is famous for?

Further up I also asked you a question that you either missed or ignored. I'll restate it here if you'd care to answer it (please consider the context of your post to which I replied to).

dog, have you ever stepped back and thought about why you are playing an MMO? Almost everything you say suggests you'd be far more suited to a single player game.

Anyways TL;DR you've come full circle and realised the analogy is asinine and distracting to the central issues so "get the discussion back to EvE online"

Round and round we go. Again. There is space to cater for players that want to opt out of pvp. Easily, cheaply and I think without too much impact on the rest of us. If this helps some guys, and gets CCP more subscriptions, what is the loss?

As for other games, again reference "above-average effect". Way, way ahead of you sport (as per crux of Malcalis' argument). Were you really as conceited as to think you were the messiah that we all needed to spell it out to us in either case? Really?

There are aspects of Eve that I enjoyed, and as stated before, comments are made in the context of the theme and parameters framed by Jester in the original post.

Discussions about me and other games however, is not really on topic, which is why I ignored it in the first instance.

I'm not sure why you believe you hit a nerve. I countered your post in a rational & calm manner, pointing out the various logical fallacies that you made. Still, if it pleases you to believe that you've caused me some sort of emotional distress, carry on dear chap.

Also, the messiah thing. Honestly, even after my plea to you to address the discussion about EvE and to NOT attack people, you just go ahead and make up more nonsense about me? It's all pointing in one direction now isn't it...

That you also refuse to address my reiterated point, it's now crystal clear that you're here just to troll with personal accusations and logical fallacies.

It's also obvious what the answer to my reiterated question should be, but you will not like the answer as it makes you and others to look foolish in your choice of leisure activity. As I prefer pertinent and rational discussion devoid of personal accusations & attacks, I'll just be leaving you alone now. Have a fun filled and risk free weekend.

and the people who want to use the non bank robber counter would sit and complain about the lack of an elevator, instead of just going to the bank around the corner that gives out shiny saving stickers when you throw them $$$...

I love this game. Been playing for a long time with many ups and downs been everywhere done everything (never flown a supercap now that it occurs to me). I wouldn't change it for the world. However, it does have a terrible reputation, almost every gamer I know has tried it and there is no getting them to stick around. Furthermore, they tell other players not to even bother. This is a bad thing.I don't think there is any recovery from this neg rep slide.will it kill the game? Maybe, eventually.Until then I will enjoy guarding my little sandcastle from all comers.

"Are we so enamored of griefing people that we subconsciously want EVE to flame out and die so we can sit down with some popcorn and watch it happen? In my darkest moments, I feel like this is exactly it. There are lots of current and former EVE players that seem positively gleeful at the prospect of watching CCP implode spectacularly."

I think that has a lot of truth about it. Having fed for a decade on the grief, tears and suffering of victims in eve the truly hardcore need to take it to the next level - and that's going to be the (partially) masochistic delight of seeing the game die painfully with CCP being on the street and the remaining veterans laughing together the liberal helpings of mutually assured pain and angst.

I'm one of (I think) a growing crowd of ex-eve players who still like to watch the community and game and see what craziness it does next - but fuck playing it any more! I'm honestly curious to see how Eve raises the bar of gamer insanity - whether we'll see the first eve-related assaults and murders and law suits and such. But I couldn't imagine being involved any more - life is too short for that level of fuckery and I decided in the end that 99% of the people I actually liked in Eve had quit the game already and the 1% remaining were in too much of a minority to ever being more than glimmering motes it a pretty shitty sunset.

I used to think CCP could turn this around - but now I'm honestly not sure. I think they (the developers) have been profoundly colonized and culturally assimilated by aspects of the player base most detrimental to the experience of new or casual players. In essence the goons won eve a long time ago regardless of colours on a map - they won by getting certain key members of their organization into influential developer positions and making their culture - the culture in the game.

Shrug though - when all is said and done it *is* just a game, its not *real*. People work and make families, they play other things. I love a bit of LARP in the UK, enjoy Dota, boardgaming and all sorts of strategy stuff. Its nice not dealing with the frat house Americulture prevalent in Eve's leading organizations (and now developers) - luckily the world is wide enough for everyone.

I am hoping that sometime very soon, the investors get sick of the profit / loss statement, fire the entire CCP management team, and install some sane people who in turn will fire the idiot dev's, and trash the CSM.

Then, and only then, we CCP have a chance of turning the Titantic around.

@Malcanis. Age of Conan head honcho once posted in his blog that the required number of subscribers to keep the game profitable is about an order of magnitude smaller than what the playerbase generally thinks. That however does not mean that the game community is anymore healthy at those lower numbers.

This is a falsehood EVE players use to feed their egos. I've seen player bases just as smart and just as stupid in several other games; EVE players are only special in terms of their capacity for self-delusion.

We need a desperate, backs-to-the-wall, nullsec. A lot of the energy to mess around with newer or high sec players come from sov null being so staid. Imagine you are looking for a playstyle that offers fun way to smash other people. Sov? No chance, you're either at the top already or you never will be. NPC Null? Increasingly desperate as sov null seccers become so secure they can park carriers on your undock. Low sec? Those guys are super hard to kill, good luck killing the guys who sit with proteus on the gates. (Although you can get frigate kills in droves).

I think Eve players would love to scrap with more potent foes but while those foes are protected by game mechanics we have to beat on newbies in high sec.

That's true for people who live in 0.0 (and people who want to) but I'm not sure how it will directly benefit new players? There is no plausible "fix" to sov that will allow an unsupported group of new players to take and defend sov.

EVE wouldn't have survived as long as it did without it's niche. The game is not good enough to survive with what makes it unique. Removing sandbox play doesn't make the ship fighting fun all of a sudden and that's an outsiders main view of EVE.

In fact EVE has probably got the best reputation from a strangers perspective. How many other games have huge followings from people who don't even play the game? How many other games are considered worth constant headlines and news articles and stories? There are regular RPS articles about how amazing EVE is. I have never once seen such an article about another MMO.

No-one has ever written about famous WoW players. No-one who doesn't play the Old Republic has anything positive to say about it at all. The same goes for The Elder Scrolls Online where the joke is that ESO is so irrelevant that it's not even worth pointing out how irrelevant it was. The Old Republic was the game made 2 years after the market moved on. ESO was the game that hadn't got The Old Republics memo.

Speaking as someone who doesn't play EVE but reads your blog and The Mittani and talks about EVE a lot of the time, the bad reputation of EVE never comes from the community or the griefing. EVE is always the game that 'sounds more fun to play than it is'.

It's the Theme Park MMO core solid foundation of fun mechanics and play that put people off EVE. The idea that to get a fight you have to jump through 50 wormholes, that the gameplay is 'spreadsheet' management.

Read this blog article from a blogger whose a pretty big deal. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=22139

This guy hates PvP. He wouldn't even play Left 4 Dead vs without having a miserable time. And yet what were his ultimate comments about EVE? 'I love the stories about EVE PvP but I hate the levelling system and the way ships move in space'

Your looking for arguments that confirm your own views. The actual stranger view of EVE is that they have incredible PvP serious alliance stories and terrible gameplay by the standard of any other MMO

Here is the game we could play to see whether your really treating this from a fair logically sound viewpoint. Lets find a random forum where people who don't play EVE are talking about EVE. If the first comment talks about how they hate EVE PvP griefing you win, if it's about how they hate spreadsheet mechanics I win.

In fact the word I've been getting from EVE newbies lately is that EVE has an incredibly friendly and welcoming community compared to other MMOs. Thats their first experiences.

EVE over any other MMO has much _more_ resources to dedicate to better mechanics because they don't need to produce content. Suddenly turning their back on meaningful PvP won't suddenly make EVE fun for newcomers to play

Never thought of posting before now, but I decided why not throw in my own two cents. Little back-story: I like spaceships and always wanted to try eve but never got around to it. In 2011 a coworker (member of goonswarm) convinced me to fire it up and give it a shot. My initial thoughts were all very positive. I loved the look, the environment, seeing lots of shiny spaceships and whatnot. I didn't go in unprepared either. Spent a lot of time on the e-uni site learning as much as I could, even hung out in their chat trying to glean as much info as I could.

My illusions of grandeur were shattered rather quickly though and I unsubbed a few months later, never having been to null space (except on accident), never joined a roam, etc. I ran into all of the sorts of new player traps (not scams, just undocking unprepared). Thinking back on it, why did I quit?

I think for me, personally, it had a lot to do with the number of obstacles to fun I ran into. I am not very eloquent so I might lose some of you here. I tried to join pvp alliances (too new). I tried to join mining corps (not enough sp). I tried to join any corps that would have me (made it into one or two). Point was, once I joined I was ignored or marginalized. These aren't "tears" as much as they are observations.

To those players who seek obstacles in entertainment and enjoy overcoming them, I salute you. For me however, Eve counts as entertainment. I find enough achievement and obstacles to overcome outside of game room. Maybe there are many like me who want the reward and not all the hassle to get it? Maybe that is why people who have attained so much in Eve are so invested in it (I can certainly understand that).

If CCP were to change the game and therefore the obstacles to achievement, it would invalidate much of what has happened before. I'm not very smart but I understand paying your dues. I see it from the bitter-vet point of view insofar as "what I did means nothing now because look how easy and risk-free everything is." I just wanted to fly spaceships and shoot bad guys and see what the other side of the galaxy looked like. I think now I am not the sort of player to succeed in Eve nor the kind you want. In a small way that makes me sad. Good luck and fly safe.

I was told by the coworker to get a minimum sp and try out a few corps/professions before bothering them. Whether he was truthful about it or not I never asked. When I told him some of my misadventures we had a lot of fun talking about the dumb mistakes I made, and I really did enjoy talking about it. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy logging back in to try again. In hindsight I don't know why I never pressed him to join the goons, maybe a little pride or something kept me from asking.

The idea of the game appealed to me tremendously. That's the reason I am still reading about it. The complexity was awesome. What didn't appeal to me was the "paying your dues" bit I alluded to earlier. I don't knock that system, not one bit. It just didn't hit me as something I wanted to pursue. The payout didn't strike me as something I wanted to put a lot of time into.

In this case I think I missed the big idea of Eve. And I absolutely agree with you about missing out on the fun. There are many aspects of Eve I think I would've enjoyed tremendously.

As an aside, I enjoy reading Jester's Trek because he opens the forum with a somewhat provocative point. I especially enjoy the (much more knowledgable than me) commenters. One thing about the "tough game" versus "casual" argument I would like to address is my claim that avoiding conflict in entertainment does not in some way make you a weak person. Many care bears (and I've seen bunnies referred to as well) may be police officers, firefighters, etc. I know this doesn't further the argument in any way, but it was something I wanted to point out.

"The impression is that either the game simply didn't appeal to you, or you're a bit too much of a 'casual' gamer for a game as complex as EVE. Probably both."

Bulding ship models is quite a "casual" activity; you can make meaningful progress in as few as 20 minutes (or, a "pomodoro"). Of course, it takes between 500 to 1,500 hours to build one of those ship models, and they're a tribute to patience, handwork and love.

I wish CCP had a ship modeler in charge, so the game provided more quality game time rather than just more quantity of game time...

Shitty hi-sec corps and the horrible eternal noobcorp members who tell new players that "you need 50M SP to go to 0.0" and similar lies have griefed 10x more new players out of EVE than all the scammers, gankers and wardeccers combined.

So, Malcanis. I keep this sort of complaint from loads of nullseccers. Just how much new player outreach have you guys done? Do you have new player recruitment going? Do you give new players roams with SRP and other goodies while teaching them the ways of EVE as you would like it? How much work do you do to reach the new players? If you guys don't do that, then all the complaints about the message the new players get from other players is both hypocritical and hilarious.

What EVE lacks is viable options for players to play as one of the good guys. The puerile arseholes seem to get all the good stuff.

Why can't players work for Concord. Why can't players/corps become vigilantes policing high-sec and low-sec. Earning a good income killing pirates?

Why is the the bounty system still an overcomplicated labyrinthine mess that few players understand and even fewer players bother with. The Retribution expansion was touted as giving players ways to get back at griefers and gankers. It clearly failed to deliver any of this.

The big thing, to me, is that there's no profit in patrolling, unless you've got more targets that you can take down than enemies who are likely to take you down. If you restrict yourself to only people who do "bad things", you're probably furthermore restricting yourself to only the most dangerous opponents.

The way nullsec solves this is basically NBSI: if everyone who's not a friend is immediately assumed to be hostile you'll likely have a large target pool of anyone who's not from around here. (Providence solves it by setting everyone they've heard of red.) There's an added value to this in nullsec because it keeps your systems safe for your folks to make money other ways, but the fact of the matter is that some of my alliancemates spend most of their time sitting around on gates with 2000+ scan resolution arty thrashers trying to blow up interceptors before they can get into warp.

On the post about "is there anyone who isn't a griefer out there?" I was tempted to submit my alliance... but I realized quickly that we're incredible griefers; we're just (mostly) not assholes, whereas most of the large groups I've flown with are full of griefers *and* assholes.

If it felt like less of a waste of time to white-knight in EVE, more people might do it.

"Why can't players work for Concord. Why can't players/corps become vigilantes policing high-sec and low-sec. Earning a good income killing pirates?"

hmmm you already can, its just not handed to you on a plate.

Why do you need to earn a "good income" the Gankers you are fighting against in the most part, spent a fortune to do it (losing a 9m cata every 15 mins adds up) , a 1m T1 griffin will stop a T2 catalyst Gank, you can scoop his wreck for 3-4m, and get a bounty of 1-2m (just pop one round into him after concord have spawned, before he dies), turn a profit and have fun...

EVE is a problematic game at its core. It has many laudable aspects like the proverbial sandbox style, but at the same time this creates a multitude of issues that CCP seems to have tilted/twisted toward a particular vision that rewards particular kinds of behavior. I believe that CCP unfortunately (IMHO) has chosen to reward grief style play, even when players do not wish to participate in such a play style (particularly new players). There are no/few white knight rewards, benefits are stacked to reward bad behavior such as can stealing, ganking, SOV/renter milking, noob baiting, and some of the really horrid scams/player abuse.

I understand the overall interest in an unfettered sandbox, BUT society is not unfettered and cannot operate as such for the benefit of the majority. All societies on earth have certain codes, a common one is don't kill another without a darn good reason and don't take others stuff. Remove those things from consideration and guess what, that is considered (rightly so) as anti-social and sociopathic.

Sandboxes are one thing, but as a noob uninterested in griefing at all, I'm finding EVE to be a less than stellar experience. There are so many pitfalls, so many complexities, so many circumstances that seem to be tweaked to make the experience reward griefing behavior, that at the end of my 1 year time of purchase, I am likely to just fade away. Sad, I had some high hopes for EVE and have invested a fair chunk of change in support of the game. I'm giving it a shot, but so far it seems to be less interesting than other games, particularly for casual gamers... The game is NOT an unfettered sandbox, it IS skewed toward a griefing style of play. This style of play is not for everyone and it extremely intimidating for newer players in particular. This being said, EVE has been successful, but it will need new blood to continue in its success. Griefing and the massive accumulation of power/control into the hands of a few is seldom a good thing for games in the long run.

So lets ask the question "how could we make bad behavior less rewarding and good behavior more profitable." With good in this context meaning behavior that creates a happier community and grows the player base.

Making good behavior profitable is a tough one as it is easily gamed by those doing bad utilizing an alt. There are likely many possibilities for making "bad acts" less rewarded is to do drips differently than normal when concord responds to a crime. In those cases the drops would be delivered to the nearest station or perhaps the nearest concord owned station. This would eliminate the monetary reward associated with doing illegal things in high sec while not directly preventing those actions.

Wardec as a whole should perhaps be scrapped. The idea behind them seems to be "I pay money so you can be my victim." Why can't victims pay money to concord to have the wardec invalidated? Or perhaps wardec should require mutual consent. If high sec were to be a safer place with less shenanigans it might meet the needs of some players that currently are turned away while preserving the current flavor in all other areas. Since highsec will be becoming safer it would be appropriate to also decrease the rewards to encourage day trips into other spaces. If for example highsec belts were stripped of nearly all mid grade minerals miners would need to mine in other places and would be rewarded because because the newfound scarcity would make it desireable. Storyline missions could be changed to be like faction war missions, much easier to complete with smaller ships but done in hostile space. In such ways highsec could become a safe place to grow up while being a place that people left to go elsewhere for their content. In this case it is possible to have the cake and eat it too. Different spaces for different playstyles.

Here's an idea, make a corp with a fixed tax rate that players cannot reuse (so the tax is taken as an NPC tax), make them invulnerable to war decs (but that means they cannot place POCO or POS), and make them available to all...

wait a minute, there are 100's of them!

the risk of a player owned corp is war decs, the benefit is POCO's POSes and no NPC tax.

If you don't want wars, join an NPC corp and start a private chat channel with your friends and play from there. but you wont get the benefits of player owned corps as you don't want the risks.

It is so amusing how the majority of people who think eve is not broken talk of the freedom of the sandbox.., honestly it may be the most moronic point of view anyone could express. Freedom... So null sec is free for all people to enjoy? Or is the fact that CFC and N3 control what 80% of null so your "freedom" is to join them and play their way? how much freedom does hi sec ganking take away? Oh and low sec is so free... To be honest the lack of freedom in this game is one of the reason it's in decline, just to be clear getting @&$@ on by some pvp ace every time you try to see what the game has to offer is not freedom. Also would should I have to join a corp to play this game, how free is that? It is also hilarious to refer to CCP as an financial giant they are an Ant, blizzard is a financial giant. This game could have millions of players if the morons in Iceland understand commercial reality and how to make something that appeals to more than the bottom 1% of the gaming community.

So sorry that literally half the god damb 0.0 systems in EVE aren't controlled by coalitions so that your excuses for not making something happen in your game are pathetically implausible, but hey, as Homer Simpson once wisely said

"Those are just facts. You can prove anything you like with those things".

It's CCP's founders that are the problem. They came from UO with a broken idea of what a sandbox was and absolutely will not let that idea go.

All the talk of bad behavior, personal responsibility, etc etc etc ad nauseam is pretty much beside the point. EVE doesn't deliver on its core premise, space combat. It's so intricately tied to economics and other "structural" issues that the act of engaging in combat, whether you win or lose, is an unbelievably major decision for anyone without an SRP to back them up. When you tie that to the fact that the only way to learn combat in this game is essentially trial and error, you've got a recipe for disaster for new players. The concepts of long term consequences for decisions and that effort (in the form of logistics and industry) is rewarded are good; but they HAVE to be decoupled from the core concept of space pew. Those concepts shouldn't overshadow the purpose of the game.

I'm tired of hearing the NPE issue expressed in terms of tutorials. That is NOT the problem. There are tons of wikis out there that will provide all the fitting and mechanics information anyone could possibly need (though players shouldn't have to supply it, it should be CCP that does it, I'll grant). The problem is that there is no way to become proficient without losing tons of ISK and grinding tons of ISK. There needs to be a Tie Fighter style combat simulator. Not some limited time noob system. Not some noob flagging system. Not anything that puts the noob (or Vet for that matter) out in the world. We need a place to practice consequence free. Of course, that would require some really good AI, which I don't think CCP is ever going to be able to do.

The other major problem is that the "join a group, its an MMO" argument completely ignores the fact that those groups are run as military organizations. Very few people are willing to become peons, plebes, and slaves for the purpose of playing a game. The solo player in EVE isn't playing alone because he doesn't like people, its because he doesn't like taking orders. There's a difference. I've played plenty of MMOs with clans/guilds. Sure I work with them to run certain content, but I run plenty "solo" or with just a few people. And none of us is giving or taking orders.

I would dearly love to see you crack open the loaded language and arguments that are forever being made (e.g., playstyles, freedom, sandbox, griefing). Like many political arguments and keywords, they limit the scope of thinking on the issue. The conversations become predetermined, either/or constructions that doom any hope of escaping the current state of the game.

I admit I'm one of those people just waiting for the explosion. We're getting really close. You're not the only one reading those reviews and the marketing guys from other companies know that there's a market segment waiting for a good game. They absolutely will hit on the right combination soon.

-EVE players learning to behave-CCP changing the game in a way that will force the player base to learn or leave-Hardcore EVE players banding together to create 'new player-friendly' content

Consequently, the bad reviews will continue to out-stream the good ones and the new blood will keep getting rarer and rarer.

When the poster-boy of content-creator players is somebody like Mittens, you have a pretty precise and depressing measurement of the kind of player you are stuck with.

Nothing wrong with a game that max out freedom and present the space as harsh.It's all the sideline tricks used by bittervets/greifers that kill the game, namely:- Meta-gaming- Abuse of game mechanics to prey on inexperienced players (ex.: suicide ganking)- Downright verbal abuse and harrassment

None of that crap is actually part of the game design.You could remove all of it and still have a game that reward risk and support non-consensual PvP.

I don't think CCP is in a position to forcefully remove them by changing the game design.

The miracle we'd need would be, for instance, that Goon decides to take on the task of improving the new players experience and change their policies, doctrines and resource allocation to make that their main effort.

How many actual goons are there, not alts but real people paying to play the game? I would say if you got rid of the goons and all the grief and nonsense they bring eve would be a better place. Actually you need mechanics to prevent giant sov empires, as it reduces the ability for more people to enjoy the game. If it is up to morons like mittens with he's over inflated view of his importance then perhaps all the doomsayers are right...

It is not the morons or the goons, its the skewed mechanics. The entire mechanics of the game are geared to an anti-social vision of a sandbox. Realign the vision of the sandbox to a couple of the shared visions of virtually all of human ethics (like life is worth something and keep your hands off my stuff does not mean that I auto-die trying to protect my stuff) and the game has a decent chance of gaining new blood. The complexity of EVE is both a gift and a curse, it is intimidating and challenging, not a bad combo. But the whole ethos of griefing is a strong negative and the continued skewing of the game in support of it is self-defeating for attracting a good group of new participants and keeping them.

Since they stopped making the information public, we are free to speculate. Mind you, the community love its fair share of tinfoilhattery.

Since they stopped saying the sub numbers are growing, like they used to say even after stopped reporting the number, our only logical conclusion is that the subs are falling.

In a way, they decision to stop giving accurate information opened the possibility for certain groups of players to make it look far worst than it actually is. Perception is reality, even more so in a virtual world.

Forget it, Jester, you won't convince anyone to stop saying the game is dying. They will keep repeating it until all players and potential players believe it.

Man, people who play EVE sure are defensive... If its not growing, it is dying in terms of gaming. Thriving is desirable, and I'm not sure that anyone is comfortable in saying that EVE is thriving. At best what can be said is that it has staying power and that it does have a strong community that supports the game. It does have some incredible staying power with certain members of the community, and this is a real strength.

The question that arises from this is can EVE move from staying (which will ultimately lead to dying) to thriving? How does the community get back to thriving? Does EVE need to evolve/migrate in order to thrive? If it does need to change in some way, in what specific way does it need to change in order to thrive? What barriers exist that inhibit thriving?

Clearly there are many issues that CCP needs to address to enhance the new user experience. A substantial component of the new user experience that is rated poorly by leaving players is the griefing associated with the game. If the current gamebase believes that griefing is a required component of the game and needs to be enhanced, then what is the likelihood of this action in increasing numbers of paying players? All of this needs to be examined, but clearly the new player experience is not what it needs to be and CCP needs to have a plan to address it. Griefing is a problem and should be discussed as a barrier to achieving the thriving status that EVE could achieve.

The silent majority do want EVE to grow so that it less sensitive to player churn and burn out. It is possible, but it does require CCP and a certain section of the current player base to grow some balls & HTFU. EVE is meant to be about consequence and yet that only extends to 15 minute timers or easily repaired and inexpensive sec status hits. Make criminal activity have truly meaningful consequences and let us see how that changes the picture.

Another good start might be for CCP live events to not feed new player kills to the null sec coalitions (remember the Doril masacre?). I'm undecided if that particular event was just gross incompetance or a well managed a devfleet sop to their coalition overlords.

Trouble is, you won't find the silent majoirty on the forums, nor even commenting on well intentioned blog posts such as this - no, you'll find them unsubbing eventually and maybe providing a negative comment on a Steam review.

Disclaimers: This isn't meant for the perma-flashies, you guys have my respect because you already accept the consequences for your actions and play well to overcome the challenges that being perma-flashy produces. I also don't want theme park safety for new players, but I don't want it to be the turkey shoot that it currently is either.

The Steam reviewers are exactly right. If you're a griefer, then this is your game. Play for 6 months, learn the scams and scare all the new players away. You have found your slice of heaven!

If you've been picked on all of your life, and you're considering purchasing an assault rifle and going to the nearest school...but haven't yet, then this is your game. Start reading all the easily available advice about how to make the lives of other people miserable and join Jita local. Better yet, train some blaster skills, buy a catalyst then scout all the asteroid fields near the noob systems. After you've been playing for a while and can fly a decent battleship, you'll be able to explore a whole new field--awoxing industrialists who want nothing more than to mine and PVE in peace. Just think of all the tears you'll harvest!

If you're an angry industrialist or high sec player who is disappointed with EVE PVE, has met some new friends belonging to The CODE, or if you are not interested in being pushed to null, then look around there are some nice alternatives out there.

I've found a bunch of new friends over at Ascent The Space Game. I get to PVE pew, mine, build and research.

http://www.thespacegame.com/

If Ascent isn't your type of game, then look at Kinetic Void. It's in development, but lots of people are playing now.

But you have an axe against them, I just care for the fireworks, thus I simply cannot be bothered if they claim victory. 30b heists are interesting only for so long. Since the game is marketed as allowing the worst humanity can provide, surely the company knew at some point they would be considered the ultimate mark.

If your hobby is to raise lions, great whites and komodo dragons, you gotta at least be aware that some day you may become the food.

Reading these comments, it dawned on me, I owe you some thanks, Jester. Thanks for allowing us anons to grief Malcanis and other ""end game"" personalities. Look how mad they become at the anon army! The game mechanics do not give us the required freedom to do that from within the client.

I should have added this comment on your previous post, but it was the above comments that triggered the idea.

Freedom, interesting how much utter BS this one word is in just EVE alone. In EVE freedom is used as a club by the powerful and knowledgeable to gank and scam the noobs into quitting. Most other games use freedom as a means for even the noobs to have a good experience. So freedom in EVE is the ability for players with more experience and knowledge to prey specifically on the lessor until they quit.

This is somewhat like Loki in the Avengers. I bring you glad tidings of a world made free, from freedom. Yeh, I kinda think you mean the other thing... Freedom to behave in anti-social ways to fellow players and then have the game reward the experienced, predatory players to feed on the inexperienced, non-predatory players, seems like freedom only for the rich, experienced griefers and nothing of the sort for the masses.

"Wouldn't it be nice to have some new blood coming in to replace them?

Assuming that at least a few of you do want that, how do we make it happen? Is it even possible?"

I would rather ask whether it is worth it, frankly. Bringing new life into the game only favors assholes and exposes the good guys and their herd of noobs to being fucked by assholes.

It could work if E-Uni was the rule and not a miraculous exception waiting for an awoxer who hits the right button and wrecks everything as everybody laughs and CCP smiles proudly, saying "aren't you all proud of that turd our lil' Chucky just pooped on the dining table?"

Achievements. Most humans aren't great at setting goals for the sake of happiness.

"Now, imagine that the only real, tangible goal in this MMO is to make money."

That's not why I play Eve. The 300 Misk from the capital escalation I "soloed" last night was nice and will keep me doing them, but that isn't why I wanted to do it.

The PvE in Eve can be amazingly fun, if you don't care about efficiency. Why are there no "Do X site in a Y ship"? If you've spent anytime in a chat with new players you've heard "I'm training for my Y mastery" but they have a very poor idea of why. Now imagine the PvP achievements. Content out the wazoo.

To maintain the sandbox, what if you could submit the achievement (include skill points required), so all achievements have been done by someone?

I really doubt this is a new idea, so I'm assuming this is not in the game because the people that could put it in are like me and don't value achievements, but that seems like a really self centered approach to game design.

I started playing in the wake of B-R5RB when this game really hit the mainstream press. I grew up with as a C-64 gamer and my favorite was Elite. I thought Eve looked great... a grown up, more complex Elite. Oh how I was wrong... I started off in Gallente space grinding security missions. Worked up to doing level 4s in a Megathron... my goal at that point was to get into a Marauder. I thought *that* would be awesome. But as time went on, I read and learned and cross trained into a Machariel (since I could do that in a week or so instead of the 2 months it would take to get into a Kronos). That was pretty much game over for me missioning-wise... By that time, I'd moved over to SOE missions for the better LP, but a Machariel against Angels is seriously a joke. I *armor* tank the Mach (to take advantage of scripted TCs instead of TEs), and still rarely get below 50% *shields* on any Angels missions. Note, most of my skills are lvl 4, not 5. So, in just a few months, missions because rote, automatic, boring... I could probably make enough ISK to plex the account with a couple of hours a day, but it's just too boring... no risk. So, I decided to try exploring in an Astero (it'd take me another month to get into a CovOps frig). But, the ISK rewards for hisec sucked. So, I moved into lowsec. Sure was nice never to have to worry about gate camps with covops cloak... But unfortunately, I just can't find empty systems to explore, and every single time I go for a data or relic site, I end up having to warp out because someone drops in on me. And that is with systems with only 2 or 3 folks in local, including me.... I lost a couple of ships even when watching dscan religiously.... probes never showed on dscan, so the folks dropping in had scanned down and bookmarked the site before I arrived.... for the express purpose of killing whomever arrived. Anyhow, I never even came close to breaking even on that experiment. Too much risk.So, then I considered doing what everybody says is the best ISK source... trading. But oh man, as it turns out, that would mean grinding missions for standings just so I can get my overhead low enough to make more margins workable (and oh yeah, in Gallente space I unwittingly took missions that screwed me with Caldari, so trading in Jita would be a standings grinding nightmare… the role of standings is never explained to newbs). There are things with margins good enough to do even with my high overhead, but folks figure out what those are pretty fast, and the margins quickly narrow to the point I'm out of profitability. I am in my 40s, 2 kids, loads of disposable income. Yet, I made the decision pretty quickly that I would not pay to play Eve. It just isn't fun enough to pay for long term (I bought a 6 month sub out the gate). So my goal became to Plex my sub. I've got to the point where that is possible, but the ISK making PVE is too mundane to spend the majority of my gaming time on that (oh, and the rising price of Plex is creating new problems if you want to have a life outside the game). Joining a corp isn't really an option... my computer is in the bedroom with my wife and 3 month old. So, voice comms are not an option for when I have time to play. So, it was interesting while it lasted, but there are too many dicks, and few fun options for solo play. So, yeah, I think I'm kind of going to get out now while I still can.Last thought... it seems kind of obvious to me, but I haven't seen anyone state it quite this way.... CCP has no motivation to stop griefing and general destruction because it is not in their financial interest to do so. Some certain percentage of everything blown up puts actual cash into CCP's pocket. Folks lose stuff, they need to buy plex to get ISK. Thus, within certain limits, it is in CCP's best interest that folks lose as many in-game assets as possible.

The guy at the Steam review just *gets* EVE in a way many veterans, CCP and the CSM can't get it. Let me quote his last paragraph:

"So... is "human interaction" the only thing that makes the game worth playing? Because if that's the case, wouldn't it be easier, more logical, and more enjoyable to interact with humans in an environment that isn't Eve Online?"

The more that I think about it the war dec system, and the ability of corpmates to shoot other corpmates in HS are 2 of the worst aspects of the game for newbies. Sure scams get a lot of press, but generally they cause some grief and the player moves on. The majority of the people I've talked to has a some what the similar story unless they join the game with friends who had been playing a while. "I came in the game and messed around a bi with mining and missions. I joining a corp and really enjoyed it until the wardec or some guy started killing corpmate right and left." As they currently are wardecs are the number one killer of newbie corps. They really serve no other purpose than to gank newbies. If you declare war on an experienced HS the corp either docks up, drops corp or plays alts. It's only the occasional new guy who dies.

It's these newbies that are the life blood of the game. These guys are going to get bored mining/missioning and start venturing out in LS/LS/WH.

Most eve griefers wont admit this to be true because they dont like the implication it enthralls, namely that they are in fact assholes praying on the weak. For some reason Eve players think bad behaviour is justified. HTFU and all that. I totally agree with the article in that this mindset scares off ALOT of "decent" people from playing this game. If the eve society keeps saying "fine, we dont want'cha, go back to WOW, looser" then sooer or later EVE WILL die, and its players are too stupid to realize they are screwing their own game up, ruining it in the process. Eve, like other games would benefit from new players. Sooner or later, the current base will stop playing, then what!? Are you so dumb that you think CCP will keep this game running forever with no players in it? If the trend is pointing downwards, CCP needs to fix it or it will die. Just recruiting "assholes" that want to grief and harass others for tears and lolz is not going to cut it in the long run. You NEED the steady player, and wether you admit it or not, alot of people have a different playstyle than your own. Just catering for one type of player is going to be the death of EVE.

Im a former player for 3 years, but found that EVE is just not the game for me, mostly because of griefers and tear-collectors. I just dont understand the fun in ruining other peoples game, hence i quit. Alot of the eve-vets will probably say "good riddance, youre a terrible player that we dont need" and they might be right. However, when the community thinks Im a dumbass if I want to mine in peace or run my boring ass missions left alone, then they are pushing that kind of player away. When happens when all the miners get tired of the bumping, the James315's, the griefers, the gankers, the thieves or the scammers. Wht happens if all the solo miners stop mining? You seriously think that the l33t-elite-high-on-themselves-for having-blown-up-a-mac-players will start mining? I think not.... You are screwing yourselves with this moronic view of your entitlement of being assholes, and the word is spreading. I keep following the EVE-related news because I WANT to like this game, but every day I am reminded of why I left. Good luck surviving the next decade..

We're currently being permacamped by an afk cloaker. He's been here for about a week or two now. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do about that as there's no way to catch him. That this severely asymmetrical, unbalanced 'gameplay', completely risk free for the griefer, has not been dealt with by CCP is beyond me.

Who wants to pay good EUR for the privilege of being paralysed like that, without any means of catching the guy?

Yep, the only thing paralyzing you is yourself. Move your activities next door and put a eyes on the gate.If he's an SB put a fast-locking T3 on the gate and insta-pop him.Use a couple of fast-locking Interceptors on that gate and tackle him when he comes through!Learn what timezone he is by when he shows himself.Use a T1 hauler or something juicy to bait him out.Put a couple of your own afk cloakies in their systems. I interpret 'gudfite' to mean you take down as many of them as you can before you go down. They're only pixels, remember? Say it with me: "They're only pixels. They're only pixels."It's amazing what you can do when you stop being afraid.

F**k new players - if they don't have the smarts and balls to play the game. After the new bounty system went live, I griefed 100+ noobs from the game in a single week, by sitting in a 1.0 station and putting bounties on their heads. Boo hoo, I've got a WANTED sticker across my face and it won't come off. Mommy... this isn't fair! F**KING LOLOLOL!

I have played Eve for about a year. I like the game a lot, but I am not sure I will stay with it. And the reason is that I don't like being an asshole. I started out with the usual grind of missions. It gets boring after a while. I found that joining a small high sec corp made missioning more fun, as a group. Then the high sec war deccs started. After trying to play along against players who clearly had more resources and experience, we found we couldn't afford the ship losses, so we docked up. Wasted money on a game you can't play. Week is up, undock, try to rebuild, then another griefer corp who saw our war history and wanted easy targets war decced us. We were wiser now. Dock up. Waste another week of game time and money. Rinse and repeat. People who enjoyed playing together slowly started dropping off the corp. Some out of the game. Now I drop off the corp. Sucks to lose connections you have built up due to a pack of assholes who are high fiving themselves for destroying another newb corp. Yeah, they're tough guys. Hate to meet people like that in a RL dark alley. I've been suckered into attacking someone who stole my mission goal. Just to have him bring in a neutral to remote rep him. There are enough scams out there that people starting new in the game are going to run across some pretty quick.

I finally came across a small corp of more experienced players. According to the forum trolls, I should have known to look for these guys right off the bat. And how to find them. Started a bit of low sec roaming, learning more about PvP. Had a couple weeks of a war dec from another griefer corp. Why? We were guilty of warning off a newb in local from attacking the criminally flagged douche bag who'd been hanging around in hig sec trying to get attacked so he could bring in his friends. So much for being nice. We tried to do the war thing, and it was kind of fun. But for a small corp where only a few of us want to shoot, while most want to mine or build stuff, and occasionally mission, we didn't have the resources. We even wasted the money on hiring mercs to join our side. Waste of money. Most never showed. So much for having any faith in the contract system. So eventually we docked up and waited for it to end.

Currently I am focusing on learning to pvp. I don't have the time to devote to the game to really be able to do it a lot. I actually have a real life, and a girlfriend who's idea of PvP is much more fun.

But back to the main point, I don't like the fact that the game is pushing me into being an asshole. The game rewards that. There is virtually no game mechanic that really supports being the good guy. That is who I am. That is who most people are. And most people playing the game. But if you are going to stay in the game, you pretty much have to become a pirate. I'd rather be a pirate killer. Where are effective game mecanics to support that game play? Why not some anti-ganking mechanics? Maybe contracts that allow miners and freighters to hire a corp to provide security -Effectivley. Why not change corp shooting rules to require a duel accept to limit awoxers? Why not some mechanics that reward a high security status?

And the vocal people on the forums... What a pack of assholes, for the most part. Oh, Eve is a sandbox, play the way you want- as long as you play our way. And our way means that the game ensures us a steady flow of easy targets, not mechanics that force us into fights we have a greater chance of losing. High sec greifing is the bread and butter of these people, because they can't rish going into low or null. I made a suggestion of an arena situation, where a mechanic, perhaps a module, would stop combat before a ship is destroyed. It is consentual combat. It could even allow additional game play options, like gambling on winners. You don't have to use the arenas, but if you want to dip your toe in te PvP pond, it is a place to try, learn, practice, without leaving new players destitute after a loss. You should have heard the gnashing of teeth and cries of HTFU. You would have thought that players would be forced into the arenas like Roman slaves. No- you must play in your sandbox OUR way! Otherwise there is no room here for you! I have tried to get some friends who are serious gamers into Eve. A couple read up reviews and the Eve forums online and declined. If the game reviews give the game a mixed reputation, the forum members will absolutely sink the game. Anyone suggesting changes to the game that limit the strong from preying on the weak is quickly STFU/HTFU/GTFO by a group of people who leave you with images of someone who can't do a single pushup crowing about his elite skills in a video game.

If PvP is the best part of the game, and I think it absolutely is, there are plenty of options for it in low and null sec. But suggest anything that takes away easy targets in high sec, and you are flogged. Why can't high sec be a safe place for the kind of players who want to grind missions, mine, etc? Even if it is a large percentage of players who opt for that, does it mean that the players who want to PvP aren't going to be able to? Someone needs to build their ships and mine their minerals. And if high sec is comfortable enough, you will find that eventually some of those players who have spent a long time in high sec may want to try a little time in low sec, and may become converts. If they don't, who cares? Everyone wins. CCP has another sub, more money, players have more options, the game has more resources and is more likely to grow and thrive.

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